Our Oregon Shipping Group continues to press for passage of legislation to establish an Oregon Shipping Authority. One key mission for the new Oregon Shipping Authority will be to re-establish container shipping at Oregon's only container terminal, Terminal 6 at the Port of Portland.
The Oregonian newspaper has given some recognition to the fact that we are the one group which is presenting a real proposal to solve the current situation, which is that zero containers are moving in and out of Terminal 6.
Here is the link to the Oregonian article: Port of Portland's Path to Idle Container Terminal Began with Shift in Policy
And a related article: Port, State Officials Discussed Letting Hanjin Walk Before Increasing Incentive Package
Here are a few key points to remember:
1) The State of Oregon owns Terminal 6. This is because the Port of Portland is a state agency.
2) An Oregon Shipping Authority would have a Board of Directors appointed by county commissioners from all over the state. So this Board will be accountable to the entire state and will understand that Terminal 6 is there to serve our state and the Northwest.
3) We realize Oregon needs to run Terminal 6 in a profitable fashion. Yes, you have to have the business. But you also have to know how to run the business effectively. Terminal 6 has been a low productivity enterprise because of a lack of efficiency. Yes, very low labor productivity can be very expensive.
4) An Oregon Shipping Authority needs to be prepared to renegotiate the lease with ICTSI, the current terminal operator. They arrived in good faith but have been hamstrung by legal restrictions and by labor strife; despite winning twice in litigation before the NLRB, ICTSI has to wait years for appeals to run their course. In the meantime: no action.
5) In any event, ICTSI is now paying Port of Portland $4.5 million a year to lease a terminal which is doing no business. This would be a good time to have a fresh discussion.
6) We should be open to making a unique deal with Longshoremen to operate Terminal 6 but we should also be prepared to have a new public corporation take over and hire public employees to load and unload ships. We have state statutes which prohibit strikes and slowdowns by certain public employees and these could be applied. Public employees are not subject to federal labor law.
7) Of course, if Longshoremen are not handling the loading duties at Terminal 6, Port Executive Director Bill Wyatt's predictions would come true: any shipping company that called at Terminal 6 "would surely be boycotted along the rest of the coast." So why not create our own shipping line that only calls at Port of Portland and heads out to ports throughout Asia and the Pacific? Such a dedicated shipping line could enhance predictability and reliability as to Terminal 6 shipping schedules.
In essense, our Oregon Shipping Group asks that the State of Oregon act responsibly and look at its capabilities so that the state is ensuring that Oregon and Northwest businesses have a container shipping service that works. We do not have to build it: it is already there. We even have a deeper Columbia River channel, finished in 2010, so that medium size ships can be accomodated. Such ships are up for lease and sale all over the world in a buyer's market. Oregon should turn this crisis into an opportunity.
Kevin L. Mannix
Project Director
Oregon Shipping Group
